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Lions president Rod Wood: Detroit's NFL draft chances 'pretty good'

Detroit Lions president Rod Wood says he feels comfortable about Detroit's chances to host the 2019 or 2020 NFL draft while speaking at the Detroit Economic Club at Ford Field. Video by Carlos Monarrez/DFP

Detroit Lions president Rod Wood answers a question during the team's Fan Forum at the Comerica Gridiron Club in Ford Field in Detroit, Tuesday, Aug. 22, 2017. At left is NFL commissioner Roger Goodell.(Photo: Junfu Han, Detroit Free Press)

Lions president Rod Wood, one of 16 founding members of the DSOC, sat down Thursday with the Free Press to discuss the group's plan to host a future NFL draft as well as other topics relevant to his team.

Wood said he's optimistic that the city will host either the 2019 or 2020 draft, but that it's less likely Detroit will be in the running for another Super Bowl.

The NFL is expected to announce future draft sites at its annual spring meeting next March.

Here's the Part I of Wood's question-and-answer session with the Free Press:

Q. Where do things stand with Detroit as a potential host site for the NFL draft?

A. “I think the approach to naming the draft is going to kind of more follow the way the Super Bowl has been awarded, that they’ll be getting years ahead of the announcement as opposed to announcing Dallas is hosting the draft really six months from now. So I suspect at the spring meetings 2018, there’ll be some decisions about the ’19 and ’20 draft potentially being awarded, and maybe even accelerating beyond ’19 and ’20. And we’re still in the mix for one of those. I think 20 cities expressed an interest in hosting the draft. They’ve winnowed it down to a smaller list than that. I won’t tell you how many, but we’re amongst the smaller list. And we actually had a meeting yesterday kind of to beef up our internal proposal.

“Unlike the Super Bowl, which we just expressed an interest in hosting and you were one of I don’t know how many cities expressed an interest, and then they took that list and winnowed it down. And it’s unlikely that we’re going to be in the current mix of Super Bowls, and I kind of always thought that was going to be longer shot than the draft. But with the draft, we actually sent in a deck of what we would present as an option to host the draft at a couple different venues in Detroit and things about the city, and hotels and restaurants and other venues that we would use. It was well received, I think, and that kept us in the mix and now we’re going to take that to the next level and go in and probably do a presentation in November."

Q. If the draft opens beyond 2020, will you bid on those, too?

A. “Yeah, if for some reason we’re not chosen for ’19 or ’20, we would be interested in ’21, ’22, ’23. That’s not on the agenda. I don’t think they’ll be deciding that many years in advance right now, although that may change because the interest is very high and there’s a number of cities, and I think we would probably fall into this category, that might be ripe for the draft but not as likely to get a Super Bowl. And so there might be an attempt, although this wasn’t overtly stated, to try and give the draft to cities that might not get a Super Bowl. So I think that the fact that we’ve expressed interest for both, that might help us make a stronger case for the draft if we’re not deemed to be kind of an appropriate destination city for a Super Bowl. So I think that we’re in a pretty good place. Can’t guarantee anything."

“When (NFL commissioner Roger) Goodell was here (in August) … he was very positive I think on the draft and very positive on the renovations to the stadium and what’s going on in the city. So I don’t have a guarantee or even a promise, but I feel pretty good about it."

Q. What sets your bid apart? What can you offer as a host site that would be unique to Detroit?

A. “Well, there’s a couple things. First of all, I think hosting it in one of several venues, and we’ve put forward three or four different locations. I think it would be great to host it at Ford Field. You could get 50,000 people in here and make it kind of a raucous event. I think what’s going on in downtown Detroit with the walkability of going to restaurants and bars and the energy that’s here. Big corporate sponsors of the NFL are headquartered in Detroit. I think the whole renaissance of downtown.

"And then the other two things I think that are really in our favor is the location of Detroit, relative to other NFL cities, because we want to get as many teams here and their fans rooting for the draft, and we’re centrally located, we’re close to obviously all of the Midwest cities, East Coast cities, and then the importance and proximity to college football. Because the draft kind of is an intersection of pro and college football and a lot of colleges want to come and watch the kids that they watched in college go through the draft, coaches want to be here, etc. So I think having kind of the intersection of college football and pro football, and so many players from Michigan and Michigan State and Ohio State, and other nearby colleges. Even the MAC. A lot of guys from the MAC have been drafted, that could be a nice selling point that differentiates us from almost any city."

Detroit Lions fans congregate outside of Ford Field in downtown Detroit before the game against the Carolina Panthers on Sunday, Oct. 8, 2017.(Photo: Junfu Han/Detroit Free Press)

Q. What do you plan to do to highlight those strengths to NFL owners?

A. “Well, we’ll highlight all those things, and some of those things will be we’re going to research how many players have been drafted from the Big Ten schools, how many players have been drafted from the MAC schools over a period of years. How close we are to big colleges, how close we are to other NFL cities. Really focus in on a couple of different venues, and I won’t get into too much about that, cause I think there’s some interesting choices. We could do something really big like Ford Field, we could do something more intimate at the Fox (Theatre). We could do something maybe outside depending on the weather and what kind of construction we’d put in place. And then using this whole entertainment district during the weekend because you have the day downtimes on Friday and Saturday before the draft starts to maybe tie in Comerica Park all the way up to Little Caesars Arena. Everything’s walkable, so I think that’s unique, and the fact that we’re the only city with all four teams downtown with three great venues is another differentiator. Proximity to Canada. We talked about maybe playing off of the NFL’s desire to be more of an international sport, being able to draw people in from Canada to go to the draft, maybe even get picked up on Canadian TV."

Detroit Lions President Rod Wood gives a tour of the new renovations at Ford Field on Wednesday, July 19, 2017.(Photo: Kimberly P. Mitchell, Detroit Free Press)

Q. What's been the feedback that you’ve gotten so far, beyond what Commissioner Goodell said?

A. “I think the people that have talked to me about it just said the proposal that we sent in was considered to be very strong, and I don’t think they’re BS'ing me, that it was a very, very positive reaction to it. And I don’t know what other cities sent in, either. Maybe we had gone a little further along in presenting what we thought we could do than other cities might have just shown two or three pages of a deck. Ours was much longer than that, but I think it shows that we’re serious and we really want it here. And I think this organization that we announced yesterday, a lot of those people are working on it, and I think that’s one of the things that we’ll have hopefully to benefit us and all the other venues going forward, is we have an organization in place that we’re regularly going to be doing this kind of stuff as opposed to, OK, we have an opportunity to bid on the draft, let’s put a group together and figure out how we do that. We have an opportunity to bid on a Final Four, let’s put a group together. We have this group that’s working on this all the time, and calendars out years in advance of when things are going to be coming up for bid and preparing for it. I’m not sure how we’ll measure the dividends that get paid from that, but it’s going to be way better I think than it’s been.

Q. Is getting a Super Bowl still a possibility? What’s the next step in terms of pursuing that?

A. “We’ll continue to express interest. I think there might be a little bit of a change in how the Super Bowls are awarded. Nothing finalized yet, but I think they’re going to try to get them out as far as they can in advance. The amount of money that needs to get raised by a city to host a Super Bowl, you can’t really do that in just two years or three years anymore. So I think they’re likely to go to the normal, kind of high destination, attractive, warmer climates. I think they’ll always keep an opening for a new stadium construction or a major renovation, and I think our renovation would fall kind of in the mid-size renovation. But I think it’s going to be tough for us to get one. I think that’s just stating the facts.

“And I think if they end up doing what I said before where they kind of look at the Super Bowl as one set of cities and the draft as a different set, if we can get one or the other, I think it’s a win for the city. And the draft’s economic impact is kind of starting to approach the Super Bowl. In Philadelphia, it was north of $100 million of local economic impact with all the hotel rooms and restaurants. People are in town for three or four days. They had 250,000 people at the peak in Philadelphia. I think the benefit to the city could be almost comparable."